A rainy Alhaurin Sunday

Heavy rain started in the middle of the night, and didn't stop until well after I set out from the house in the dark, to collect Gordon the organist from Mijas Golf village, and take him to Benalmadena, before heading inland to celebrate my one Eucharist of the day at Alhaurin. 

Driving out through town, people were sitting under toldos outside the bars chatting, drinking coffee, eating breakfast tostados drizzled with olive oil. There were a few people in shorts and tee shirts out walking their dogs in the downpour, seemingly oblivious to the weather. On the back roads, without drainage. water several inches deep covered the entire road surface, flowing down into the nearest arroyos. 

Surface water flowed in sections of the rio Fuengirola normally dry and stony. Pity there was no time to take photos, with a timetable to keep and uncertain road conditions to navigate. Sometimes the big junctions with the main road have flooded underpasses and traffic is halted for hours. They are not well drained, or their drainage silts up. I drove on the motorway to get to Benalmadena, avoiding the coast road, crossed in so many places by drainage channels that might, in times of flood conditions be impassible.

By the time I arrived at Alhaurin, the worst was over, and only a few from the regular congregation of two dozen were absent by reason of not being able to leave home or use roads due to flooding. It was my final visit to take a service there, as I'm not scheduled to return before my departure after All Saints weekend. The inland congregations make an effort to reach out to people over a wide area of towns and villages. There's potential for growth, and it would be good to see another priest working away from the coast. This happened for a while, but membership and funding shrinkage meant that the venture had to come to an end. It would be providential if a retired cleric were to settle in the area and offer their services voluntarily, and an encouragement to Lay Reader Caroline and the team of volunteers whose enterprise is already bearing rich fruit in community building.